Till one year back, we saw a very high percentage of new SIPs coming in smallcap funds. Last one year, both the flows as well as the SIPs have been coming in the largecap funds, Sundeep Sikka, ED & CEO, Reliance Nippon Life AM.

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July was a tricky month given that there was volatility and a crunching fall in some of the small and midcap stocks. I am so happy to see that the Indian investor has kept the faith and the SIP collections are still looking decent.

Last month, when the numbers came, I was on you channel and I mentioned that clearly the trends are changing. What we have seen is in spite of volatility for the last four-five months, the SIP numbers and the number of new investors coming in the mutual fund industry has just been increasing.

Can you give me a broad sense of the SIP if you have the data? What has been the change in trend at your end, whether more sips are moving towards largecaps after this so called adjustment in mid and smallcap stocks and after SEBI reclassification?

We are on a large base with almost 25 lakh SIPs. From the stock point of view, the majority of the SIPs are equally spread out between largecap, ELSS and balanced fund. But from an incremental basis, in the last three-four months, we have seen the trend, more inflows are coming and also in SIPs the flows have been coming in largecaps.

Again, a more important thing here to be noticed is that the investors have this time, unlike in past, have not panicked. The overall redemptions for the industry has been constant and that is a function of SIPs. Earlier, whenever the market used to go up or the industry used to do well, majority of the flows used to come in lump sums. This time, the majority of flows are coming through SIPs because of which the investors are having a better experience and also a longer investment horizon. As a result, redemptions are not triggering in despite the volatility that we have seen in the last few months.

This is interesting. Just want to understand what kind of money flow are we seeing across market caps and in the markets in general? Do you see a lot of SIPs for largecap funds or is it more for midcap or smallcaps?

The trend is they get equally split. Till one year back, we saw a very high percentage of new SIPs coming in smallcap funds. Last one year , both the flows as well as the SIPs have been coming in the largecap funds. Another trend that is changing over the last few years is earlier ELSS, (the Equity Linked Savings Scheme) used to see inflows coming during the last quarter but now we see a lot of SIPs coming in tax saver scheme with a lock-in of three years, Clearly this is a sign of a maturity of the Indian investors. Irrespective of the market volatility, we are going to see roughly around Rs 10,000 crore of net flow a month stabilising at these levels and keep increasing gradually.